September 11, 2012

During the Democratic convention you heard from various commentators that the Democrats have a weak bench. My guess is, that's intentional for two reasons:

- Obama's vanity, insecurity, and lack of relationships with other politicians

- To set Hillary up in 2016. As we saw last week with Bill Clinton's star turn, Obama needs the Clintons. That gives them leverage.

For example, whatever happened to Howard Dean, small-town doctor turned six-term governor of Vermont? As you'll recall, Dean was the Democratic frontrunner for all of 2003 due to his opposition to the Iraq war, but when he finished 3rd in Iowa and gave his supporters a high school coach-style war whoop to keep them motivated, he was immediately discarded in favor of the big stiff John Kerry. As a consolation prize after Kerry lost, the Democrats made Dean chairman of the party for 2005-2009, where he did, by all accounts, an excellent job, bringing his campaign's Internet sophistication to the party in the service of tying the liberal base to the Democratic brand and helping the Democrats win the House in 2006 and 2008.

To me, Dr. Dean looks like the natural leader of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. I suspect other people think so, too, which may be why he's on the shelf.

Dean is currently 63, younger than Hillary and younger than Romney. As far as I can tell, he's unemployed. (Or, maybe, he's cashing in big time doing whatever it is ex-politicians do.) He was at the Democratic convention last week, giving loyal Go Team interviews, but the biggest speech he was asked to give was a talk to the Oregon delegation.

My guess is that Dean's unforgivable sin is that he was right about Iraq and Hillary was wrong.

Also, here's 28 Sherman's post on the many reasons Occupy Wall Street, despite a huge press push, was so much less effective than the Tea Party, which played a huge role in the GOP winning back the House in 2010.

One of many things the country needs is a better left. 28 Sherman implies that Dean would make an ideal public face for liberals trying to rein in Wall Street. A Yankee (with a Jewish wife) who grew up on Park Avenue because his father made good money on the Street sounds like somebody who would seem trustworthy when he'd say his mission was to reform Wall Street, not wreck it. But, nobody is too interested ...

49 comments:

This is a real mystery to me. We just had a major meltdown of the financial system that is still causing a lot of pain throughout the country, but neither of the parties seem at all interested in talking about how to make it better.

I imagine there's a 'follow the money' type explanation, but I would guess there's a large number of people who would respond to that plank of the platform. Romney especially seems like he could win some votes without losing anything by just saying that he'll reign in the banks from where they are and Obama dropped the ball. Even I could write a half decent speech along the lines of 'America is about working for money, not profiting from shifting numbers on spreadsheets' or whatever

While the Sherman 28 post was excellent, he tries to identify the Democrats as a bunch of special interest groups who have nothing to do with each other, he doesn't point out the same is true for the GOP. Pro-lifers, hawks and Small Govt conservatives Have strongly contradictory views on things.

I read the link to the post on Occupy and found it interesting. I believe the biggest reason was left out: Occupy was never a grassroots movement to begin with, though it really wanted to be one.

Remember back when it first got started, some of us, like Karl Denninger, wondered if this was something we should support, even if it was of the Left?A mission statement was there at the *very beginning* that did read like what "Son of Brock Landers" called a "Port Huron statement".

Basically, in order to be on the side of "Occupy" and protest Wall St., you had to sign up for abortion rights, gay rights, and every item on the far-Left agenda. What kind of grass-roots movement does that? Answer: one that doesn't exist.

Suspicious, I quickly found (and I think my husband pointed me to the Big websites on this) that it was started by some fringe group that saw the Arab Spring as well as the Tea Party movement and thought if sowed some seeds, a movement could get off the ground that would support Leftism.

Being against the 1% was never the point, but just a vehicle to help push the Lefty package.

The political establishment really seems to have formed a united front on this one. McCain apparently had serious doubts about the first, Paulson originated TARP bailout, and had he gone public with them and refused to back them that probably would have changed the dynamic of the election and won it for him (he didn't lose by that big a margin after all). But despite a clear political advantage for him, he didn't do that.

Its become normal for a successful party chairman to wind up in the cabinet, and because he was an elected politician with some national support Dean was a better choice than most. But he got completely frozen out of the Obama administration, which seems to be made up of Hillary and various Clinton retreads (and one Bush retread,who turned out to be one of his better selections) and assorted hacks (Chu excepted).

National politics in the U.S. seems to have become much narrower, almost 18th century like.

I think it is mostly fine right now. The Dems had their "tea party" moment and it was during the last five years of the Bush presidency. Their issue was the Iraq war and I believe that they truly believed in this cause at the time.

Their passion as seen in countless demonstrations (which was really against Bush as we saw when it died once Obama took office and was a continuation of Bush) fueled Democratic victories in congress despite low unemployment and gas prices.

The fact of the matter is that we get more riled up when the other guy is in office, but only murmur when our guy is in.

Also, here's 28 Sherman's post on the many reasons Occupy Wall Street, despite a huge press push, was so much less effective than the Tea Party, which played a huge role in the GOP winning back the House in 2010.

They don't want to talk about it because every time they do there is the fear of people smacking their ridiculous claims down.

The current economic crisis is the product of bad government policies not only condoning, but implicitly backing bad Wall Street policies.

Glass steagall was repealed by Clinton administration, a lot of the perverse housing policies rhetoric was pushed by the Clinton administration.

The Democrats' current crutch is responsible for a lot of the pain today. Of course Republicans are to blame as well, Bush did nothing to stop it and he started two fruitless wars. They're hiding the hell out of him as you can see, Democrats are towing the line closely with Clinton. Hoping no one calls them out on his bad policies.

We're currently growing another bubble right now, that would be the education bubble. Easy credit + no forces to keep universities from raising fees = ballooning tuition rates.

Although this bubble won't burst like the housing one since people can't go bankrupt on their student loans. But it will be a huge weight on the economy, lots of debt on the youth means a lot less consumption in all spheres.

Dean pissed off some significant figures, including Rahm Emanuel, during his tenure at the DNC. And I think 60-something white guy is just not the direction the Dems are ever going to go for the foreseeable future.

Dean had a lot of enemies naturally. He was a proponent of reform at all levels. The establishment hated him for that. He would have enacted what Obama only gave lip service to. The fact that he was very successful throughout his time at the DNC is proof that he was a man of action and not talk. When he wasn't appointed to any major position within the Obama administration I knew my vote was wasted.

The Democrats have a problem. Once the party becomes predominantly PoC, the white leadership will have to be purged. In its place will be an assortment of lesser talents of various ethnic stripes who will be beholden to the tribes that elected them. Just as the Republicans will become the white party, the Democrats will become the brown party; whether they like it or not. My guess is that they will keep a few token whiteys around as window dressing but they won't represent whites any more than Tim Wise does. We already got a taste of this when Nancy Pelosi did not step down as the leader of her party in Congress after the 2010 elections. The expected thing for her to do was to step aside and let a successor take the reins but everybody knew that it would have been the kiss of death for both Obama and their party had the Democrats put a PoC in her shoes. So they just took the path of least resistance and kept her as the head of her party in Congress. They won't be able to do this forever.

I wonder what role race replacement has played in this. I can think of three promising, white Democrats from Orange County (CA) who have had their political careers effectively ended because of the massive demographic shift in the north of the county -- Tom Umberg, Joe Dunn, and Tom Daly.

Umberg has a stellar resume --army officer, UCLA and Hastings Law, Morrison and Forster, service in the Clinton administration -- but 'Latino' Lou Correa for state senate, and them not one but two Vietnamese candidates in his bid to become county supervisor. Had he advanced, he could have eventually been the kind of moderate Democrat to keep working class whites in the fold.

Joe Dunn was perhaps less promising, but did make it to state senate. He retired in 2002. He ran for statewide office -- Controller -- in 2006, but was defeated by John Chiang in the primary.

Eventually a large portion of white male Democrats -- in and out of California -- will be suffering the fate of these two (now) private citizens.

The problem with the Occupy stuff is that the Tea Party was/is a real deal mass movement and the Occupy guys were not.

First of all, I've walked through Zucotti Park over a thousand times on the way to work, and Zucotti park is real small. I never knew it was a 'park' until about a year ago. A crowd that could not fill up Radio City Music Hall is not a mass movement. Second, if you asked an actual occupier what they were protesting you'd get a bunch of disjointed answers like 'the govt installed chip in my brain that controls my movement' or something like that. The characters for the show Rent had to come from somewhere.

But they did provide visuals, which the NYT could say that what caused the crowd was what lots of NYT reporters always cannot stand, which is people who make more money than one can make in journalism. Ergo the one pct stuff.

The occupier 'movement' never had an impact because they never actually existed, they were/are a fictional mass movement made up by the press.

It could be part of it is that Iraq doesnt matter to the Left anymore. The bipartisan Invade the World tendency isnt motivating the Left right now. Take that away and what was that '04 Dean? A fiscal conservative, almost.

We're out of Iraq, so it's not much of an issue anymore. Obama seems to be losing his love for Afghanistan, too. And the Dems won't remember their principles and oppose death squads and killer flying robots and indefinite detention until another Repub is in office.

I suppose the next big foreign policy issue is Iran. However, there is little or no difference between the candidates on that--probably because both candidates want to raise money from Jewish donors with strong ties to Israel, and more generally because Israel is pretty popular among Americans who give a damn about foreign policy. (Most Americans don't; most don't travel outside the US, speak a foreign language, or know much geography or history.)

The fact is: Dean became a national laughing stock immediately after the Scream. You cannot recover from that.

The Scream wasn't that big a deal. The media made it a big deal in a way that appeared intended to knock Dean off the rails. Other candidates have done things that could have knocked them off the rails if the media chose to harp on them night and day, but the media didn't. Jeremiah Wright could have been used to knock Obama off the rails, but the media didn't wantto.

Are we underestimating Democrats' love of the new and exciting? "Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line"? Hillary is an exception, except maybe that millions of women fell in love with her in the 1990s and stayed in love with her.

Compare that to the Republicans, who except for W, pretty much limit the nomination to candidates who have run for President before.

The Democrats have not nominated a second-time candidate since McGovern, who was only a candidate for two weeks before the Convention in 1968.

If Democrats don't feel that Chris-Matthews leg tingle the first time, they're not going to feel it later on. And if they do feel that leg-tingle, and you don't win, by the next-election cycle their legs will be tingling for somebody else.

Right, as mentioned above Rahm Emanuel hated Dean. Rahm ran the Democratic congressional campaign committee in 2006 and opposed Dean's "50 state strategy", it was because of Dean that the Dems took over the House and Rahm never forgave him for stealing his thunder.

It was small-minded for Obama to stiff Dean (the first winning party chairman in modern times not offered a cabinet post by the new president).

The logical cabinet post for Dean wasw Health & Human Services. The Attorney General is always a lawyer, likewise, the President's cabinet officer in charge of Medicare, Medicaid and healthcare reform should always be a physician-- and should hijack the title "Surgeon General" from the Public Health Service while they're at it.

The occupier 'movement' never had an impact because they never actually existed, they were/are a fictional mass movement made up by the press.

Yes. Contrast the minimal coverage given by the Washington Post to the hundreds of thousands of people who attended the September 12, 2009 TEA Party rally in Washington DC, with the months of fawning coverage given a handful of Occupy neo-hippies who camped out in McPherson Square.

Embassy burnt to the ground, the US Ambassador and three Marines murdered by an AQ Mob in Libya? The Cairo Embassy ransacked and another episode scheduled for Friday with again the AQ flag flying over the Embassy?

Dean-o pushes weakness and appeasement. Where has that gotten Obama? Humiliation and the Ambassador and three Marines killed.

PC makes you stupid, and the price for Dean-o's policy is running the US to Muslims demands: no free speech, defacto Sharia.

Military strength periodically demonstrated is vital to retaining freedom. Otherwise we'll live in Black tents or according to Sharia.

Prof Woland above is correct, Dean-o is also WHITE and that cannot fly for Dems now.

Occupy was just a front to tax the middle class in the guise of the 1%. And everyone knew it -- which is why it went nowhere. Rich hippies banging drums and getting baked screaming about White people will not a mass movement make.

The politics of America will be screw Whitey to pay for non-Whites, apologize/grovel abroad and impose Sharia vs. resisting it, etc. Dean-o is not the person of color Dems need for that. He's not Black, which makes him a Jesus 2.0 figure and immune to criticism and desired by White women of all socio-economic backgrounds.

Kaz made a good point. Much of the concentration of wealth into the 1% and the financial related corruption is due to policies pushed by Democratic administrations, which most Republicans signed onto instead of opposing like they should have. This hasn't really sunk in with either left-leaning or right-leaning commentators. The dominant narrative is the reverse, of Democrats letting a Republican agenda pass.

The Clinton administration did most of the damage, being responsible for NAFTA, inflating the tech and then starting to inflate the mortgage bubble and repealing the New Deal era financial regulations. The Obama administration decided not to prosecute any bankers for malfeasance after the 2008 crash, and went far beyond the original Paulson TARP in terms of the scale of its bailouts and using it as a taxplayer backed slush funds for banks.

The Republicans went along with this, providing votes for the part of the agenda that had to get through Congress (on TARP, more of the dissenting votes were Republican, but on the other stuff more of the dissenting votes were Democrats) and not doing anything to stop what was happening when they had the Presidency and the White House. The Bush Justice Department at least shut down Arthur Anderson and put a few CEOs in jail. But we are basically dealing the Democratic agenda.

If the US was a democracy, a Republican party that actually stood for doing something about the financialization of the U.S. economy could take power and stay in power for generations in the matter of the Democrats after the New Deal. But they are not doing this. Their presidential candidate this year is one of the crooks. Nominating Romney is like nominating Joseph Kennedy to run against Herbert Hoover in 1932.

You're as wrong about Dean as you were about Ritter. You angrily supported him when he was proven to be unreliable and compromised. For all we know you still think Ritter was and is reliable.

The reason that people like Ritter cannot be trusted is that he has no morals, has piss-poor judgement and self control and is eminently susceptible to blackmail. Worse because you never know when or if he was compromised by the enemy, you have to throw out everything he ever said.

If you can't wrap your head around that because of your anger at Bush 'betraying' you on immigration, you really should avoid commenting on Iraq entirely even in an aside.

You do remember supporting Bush before he endorsed amnesty? You do remember getting more traffic after you started bashing Bush? You remember defending Scott Ritter after it was clear he was a kiddie diddler and unreliable as hell? Supporting him and his assessments when he was as unreliable as a person can be and proven to be unreliable because of his documented history of huge security risks tells me you need to separate yourself from the issue. If you still support Ritter when nobody can trust his assessments that should set off warning bells in your own mind. The fact you angrily supported him when he was proven to be untrustworthy should worry you more.

If you don't understand why we don't allow men like Ritter to hold high security clearances or to make sensitive judgements, you simply don't understand how security works. That or you simply don't care because he supports your position. Either way you are an unreliable source about the whole issue.

You may be right. You might be wrong. But trusting and defending Ritter because he supports your position should tell you that you are not thinking clearly on the issue surrounding Iraq.

And there's no shame in being drawn into Buchanan's orbit. He's a towering figure in the conservative movement and obviously a charismatic and persuasive man. Just don't let your admiration and support lead you to make excuses when he is wrong.

"Pro-lifers, hawks and small government conservatives have strongly contradictory views on things."

The old pre-National Review right was much more intellectually consistent. The Paul versus Romney fight during the primaries was over whether or not to return to that or stick with the current standard conservatism. The Sherman 28 post was a little incorrect in saying the current Republican party was the "less taxes and less government" party but it does tend in that direction. A more Paulite Republican party would be even more like that and would be made up of more natural allies. It would still be pretty unattractive to minorities because of their heavy reliance on the welfare state and government jobs. I work with lots of Asians, blacks and hispanics and I don't see any great love between them and I can easily see their Democrat coalition breaking down in the future. It won't be pretty to watch if it happens.

"Take that away and what was that '04 Dean? A fiscal conservative, almost."

It's worth mentioning that Dean originally became governor in Vermont in Vermont upon the death of the sitting Republican governor, Dick Snelling. Dean continued a lot of Governor Snelling's tightwad policies while in office. It's also interesting to note that he had consistently high ratings from the NRA while governor (pretty much a must for any politician in heavily-armed Vermont) and even on the national campaign trail stressed local autonomy and federal noninterference on the gun control issue.

"Or, maybe, he's cashing in big time doing whatever it is ex-politicians do."

That does seem to be the case: http://thecomposite.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/done-with-dean/

I'm perplexed by the so-called "Dean Scream". It was a shout or a yell, not a scream. It was normal political campaigning. But the most perplexing thing was that it was the Democrats in the media who took him down over it. That's the sort of behavior they normally reserve for Republicans.

I assume that this was part of some intra-Democrat struggle between different factions of the party.

The Dems had their "tea party" moment and it was during the last five years of the Bush presidency. Their issue was the Iraq war and I believe that they truly believed in this cause at the time.

They never "truly believed" a single word they said. Which is why Obama has been able to be more Bushy than Bush on foreign policy - assassination of US citizens, wire-tappings, attacking foreign countries without bothering with Congressional assent - and not only have Democrats not objected, they've applauded.

I've seen a lot of disgusting, cynical, self-serving and dishonest behavior in politics, but the way the Democrats flicked in an instant from fervently anti-war to pro-war when the "R" guy left the White House and the "D" guy entered it is by far the worst thing I've ever observed.

Even if you didn't know about Bankster Soros's funding of OWS, then you still would have realized what was happening when OWS-NYC tired of protesting against the Koch Brothers [who aren't banksters - they're oil tycoons] and against Fox News, and floated instead the idea of protesting Blankfein & Goldman-Sachs: IMMEDIATELY Sheldon Silver and Jerrold Nadler and Michael Bloomberg and even Barry himself were all over the airwaves ordering OWS-NYC to back the hell off.

I don't have the time right now to google it all properly, but the events unfolded over the course of late October 2011 and early November 2012:

Wednesday, November 2, 2011:The day after New York state and federal lawmakers, including Sheldon Silver and Jerrold Nadler, urged a crackdown on quality-of-life offenses at Zuccotti Park (and the day that front page of The New York Post told of layoffs at a cafe allegedly caused by an Occupy Wall Street-related drop in business), Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that the protesters were hurting the neighborhood and small businesses...

Thursday, November 3, 2011:At least 15 Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested Thursday after marching on Goldman Sachs to deliver an indictment of the financial giant... At noon, about 300 marched eight blocks to the firm’s HQ to deliver their "verdict" of guilty and to demand the imprisonment of CEO Lloyd Blankfein...

Anyway, if you are at all familiar with "intellectual" activity in the late 19th Century and [pretty much all of] the 20th Century, then you recognize this as nothing more than Frankfurt School Nihilism 101: Profit when the market goes up, profit when the market goes down [via "short" contracts], control the message [via your ownership of the media] and ALWAYS BUT ALWAYS guide the emotional response of the public in a direction which is both beneficial to you and detrimental to your opponent.

"To me, Dr. Dean looks like the natural leader of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party."

I got the feeling the media was waiting to bring him down, and he gave them all the ammo they needed with that defiant scream. He also struck me as someone with populist potential despite his far-left politics and station in life.

The left-wing of the Establishment wouldn't like the kind of candidate who would be a wild card and make policy decisions independently. That's why Lurch got the Establishment push. I found Dean to be among the more likable presidential candidates in a long time, so I can see why his aspirations have been squashed by being brought into the party machinery, effectively containing him.

" Severn said...I'm perplexed by the so-called "Dean Scream". It was a shout or a yell, not a scream. It was normal political campaigning. But the most perplexing thing was that it was the Democrats in the media who took him down over it. That's the sort of behavior they normally reserve for Republicans.

I assume that this was part of some intra-Democrat struggle between different factions of the party."

Yeah, I remember when the Dean scream was looped on NPR. They must have played it four or five times in a row in Morning Edition, discussed it constantly, etc. It had the feel to me of a political hit then, but I have no idea why or by whom. (I guess Kerry would be the obvious suspect.)

Imagine choosing your doctor, lawyer, dentist, auto mechanic, plumber, electrician, gardener, etc., on the basis of something as idiotic as having heard him once make a funny-sounding scream in a public speech. And yet, we select presidents that way.

Amen. Under president Romney and a Republican congress, I predict the Democrats will remember their opposition to war, indefinite detention, and domestic spying, and the Republicans will forget their opposition to deficits and federal spending. All too often, politicians use beliefs the way athletes use jerseys--they signal what team you're on, nothing more.

Speaking of Iran, there was an interesting stat published in this FT article over the weekend: between 2008 and 2010, apartment prices in Israel rose 39%. Plus, new high rises in Tel Aviv are selling for Manhattan-like prices. Apparently, the folks bidding up prices on these apartments aren't terribly worried about an existential threat from a nuclear Iran.

By the same token, if Manhattan liberals were really worried about global warming, you'd think they wouldn't live in Manhattan, which would be swamped by the rise in sea levels global warming alarmists predict.

If Dave is really in Hackensack, he would know that most of Manhattan rests on a big pile of schist deposited by the glaciers and is high ground. (Tribeca and the West Village being the only two really low lying areas). The main problem areas in regarding to rising sea levels are Republican voting white working class areas in southern Brooklyn and Queens.

There was no "scream". People say "scream" simply because it rhymes with "Dean", but if you look at the incident in question there is no "scream". A "shout" or a "yell", perhaps, at the most.

I'd sooner take rat poison than vote Democratic, so I view your parties politics as an outsider. And as an outsider it seems obvious that Dean was deliberately taken down by the Dems in the media. Exactly why they did that I don't know, or even really care. But this "Dean Scream" stuff was a Democrat hit job on a Democrat.

The closest thing to an intellectual leader OWS has is David Graeber, a self-described anarchist anthropologist (lost his former job at Yale for organizing grad students). His parents are Ostjuden New Yorkers who served in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. But OWS opposes having any sort of concrete demands, strategy or genuine leadership.

Whiskey, how was Dean wrong about Iraq? There were no WMDs, he wasn't behind 9/11 or anthrax, it cost massive amounts of money and lives, plus it strengthened Iran.Anonymous Ritter critic: my understanding is that Ritter's claims have been borne out. Maybe he is a kiddie-diddler, it has negligible bearing on his accuracy.

If Dave is really in Hackensack, he would know that most of Manhattan rests on a big pile of schist deposited by the glaciers and is high ground.

Regardless of where Dave is, the facts remain that Yes, Manhattan is built on rock (though not deposited by glaciers) and No, it's not "high ground".

The highest point on the entire island of Manhattan is up at the northern end of the island, Bennett Park, and it's just 265 feet above sea level. Most of Manhattan is a lot lower than that that though. Central Park, which is higher than anything to its south, is about 65 feet above sea level. Washington Square Park sits at an altitude of 20 feet.

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